Category — consumer warfare

Health insurance mandate upheld : SCOTUSblog.

A federal judge in Detroit, in a broad ruling upholding Congress’s power to require all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, decided Thursday that the mandate is necessary to prevent the “extinction” of the nation’s entire health care insurance market. U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh said the requirement was well within Congress’s power to regulate commerce among the states. The decision is the first by a federal court to rule directly on the constitutionality of the buy-or-be-penalized provision of the sweeping new health care reform law. [....]

The ruling came in the case of Thomas More Law Center, et al., v. Obama, et al. (District Court docket 10-11156) in the Eastern District of Michigan. That lawsuit is one of a lengthy list of court challenges across the Nation to several parts of the new health care law. But the provision requiring everyone to have a health insurance policy by the year 2014 was clearly the most visible part of the package for most Americans, and it has been subjected to the most energetic challenge. The key to most of the challenges is the argument that refusing to buy health insurance is not activity, but inactivity, and Congress has never had the power to order people to engage in economic activity when they choose not to do so.

But Judge Steeh refused to accept that view of what the insurance mandate is. “Far from ‘inactivity,’” the judge wrote, “by choosing to forgo insurance [the challengers] are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance, collectively shifting billions of dollars, $43 billion in 2008, onto other market participants.”

IMPORTANTLY YET UNSAID (the Court is too damn polite sometimes): The "Thomas More Law Center" is a disgusting racket openly dedicated to destroying the separation of church and state. Besides conducting lawsuits (sometimes over heinously frivolous and/or hateful things), the Center serves as a school for lawyers who want to learn specifically how to use legal precedent as a weapon to enforce Christian values by trying the right cases in the right way to warp the Constitution into a supporter of their chosen religion.

Not much has made me feel great about Detroit lately, but I'm damn proud that it could be one of the places where a level-headed judge put his boot on the face of Matt Staver and his fellow bigoted zealot lunatics. Yaaaaay, D-town!

(For the record, although I wouldn't care much *what* the case was as long as the Thomas More Center lost it, I think the judge's argument is sound in this — though I think that for the situation to be truly fair, there should be a mandate that free market controls (note the phrase) be in place to guarantee that people aren't being forced to buy from only certain companies, or to pay unfair prices. It's not cool that people can be forced to buy insurance (car, health, whatever) in markets that are obviously poisoned by bad business practices and storebought politicians. However, it isn't this judge's fault that that piece is missing; he made a sound decision with what he had.)

When I started martial arts a few years ago, I wasn't in bad shape.  I was nearing thirty, had had a kid, never really paid much attention to my diet; but I've always been stronger than average and "bouncy"; I burn a lot of calories just twitching and running around generally.  So compared to many (especially many Midwestern American) women, I was pretty lean, with slightly-better-than-average strength and muscle-tone.

Fast forward through a whole bunch of taiji, a serious dose of shorin ryu and a good sprinkling of kungfu, plus some basic mandatory pushups-and-situps stuff.  Now I'm even slightly more lean, quite a bit stronger (especially in the core-muscle area), and if I really work at it, I can show you actual muscles, like, with lines and stuff.

Naturally this situation has been a tinderbox all along.  Wanting to be stronger can only be a distant glow for so long; eventually the fuse catches and before you know it you're shopping for weights and getting angry that you don't have room for a squat-cage.  Oh yes!  The geek-fire hath spread again.  ;)

I'm up to almost 50 pushups and 130 crunches (still doing the 100 pushups / 200 situps challenge from before; it works! –Or it's working so far, anyway!); and yeah that's nice, but come on, it's beginner stuff.  Time to get some barbells and really have fun!

Only…getting them is not fun.  Getting them, so far, has meant being asked to "talk to my husband about it" twice, and directed to the Pink Hand-Weights section whenever I'm stupid enough to look in a store.  And did you know that weightlifting equipment — even professional Olympic-grade stuff — has a crippled female version?  Seriously, the bars are 2" shorter and often lighter.  WHY??  I bet they don't suggest the "women's bar" for short men, either, because it's pretty obviously not about size — I have yet to see a single "for people under 5'5"" or something on any of it–not that that would make much sense either, since, you know, it's a BAR and you can just slide the weights in farther if it's really an issue — no, it's divided by GENDER, and to the point where women competing professionally in weightlifting are forced to use the crippled equipment, while men never are.  So a six-foot woman should be using wussier equipment than a five-foot guy.  BECAUSE OF THE WHY?  Do we have to go in the back door and use a separate drinking-fountain too?!  (Oh wait..sometimes, yes we do).

So anyway — not fun, that and the general amount of static even the subject of pursuing strength as a goal generates in the population at large…apparently everyone and their mother (as well as my mother) feels they have not just the right, but the obligation, to inform me that I'd better be careful or I'll be ugly (because strong men are attractive and strong women are icky) / have no breasts (as opposed to what? Have you looked at mine, lol) / scare people (is bad why? Scary men are envied, and they arguably can't even make as good a use of it as a woman can, defense being a particular issue of ours) / go blind or piss off Jesus or whatever. 

Oh, also, once I get some (more? visibler?) muscles I am apparently going to bleach my hair and prance around in bikinis all the time and suddenly become incapable of marital fidelity.  Geez, who knew that being strong also turned one into a "stupid slut"!  (Or a lesbian, which in popular parlance seems to be a frigid subspecies thereof.) 

I can't imagine how that narrative got started.  ::facepalm::

For various reasons, this is looking like a Lost Year for me, coming up; a year of biding and slowly plodding towards goals I had hoped to reach this summer, but which "the triumph of inferior influences", as the I Ching puts it, has stalled for a while.  Which doesn't make it seem like a bad year to focus on self-improvement, specifically strength of various sorts, which will hopefully make me readier for the challenges when they do hit, after sitting around building up energy for a year. 

WHAM!  Yup. 

Oh, and I seem to have found an awesome full-contact Wing Chun school right by my house.  Think I'll go ahead and put the cream on that there cookie, and learn to brawl too, if I can eek out the time!

So that's my "new and exciting", or a chunk of it anyway.  Feel free to share yours!  Just don't tell me how I'm going to lose some measure of my "femininity" or something by working out, or I will come over there and put this Olympic Men's Size barbell right up your…ego.  ;)

As citizens, we care (or at least have a responsibility to care) about whether our governments are doing well or badly.  That responsibility is the flipside of our right to fix government organizations when we don't agree with what they're doing, or how.

We've been citizens for hundreds of years, so we're getting used to this process, to these rights and responsibilities, sorta.  But we've only been consumers for a few decades, so it's understandably still catching on that, hey!  That means we have a responsibility to know and care what companies are doing and how; and also a right to support the good ones and kill the bad ones!

A few for your consideration, then:

GOOD:

EZTakes.com is a movie-seller specializing in the "stuff you used to find only at the corner family video-store, before they went out of business", and they certainly do have a fascinating stock of odds, ends and weird stuff.  Even better, though, they have a clean, simply-designed website without a lot of privacy-violating crap on it, and they refuse to DRM their files, so the movies you buy from them (at great prices; many are even free) are guaranteed to work with whatever hardware, etc. you want to use them with. 

What *really* impressed me is their terms of service, which states, "we will not restrict your rights as a Consumer, including fair use…and if we ever try to, this statement takes precedence." 

Now that's commitment — contractually limiting your future activities to ensure that you mean what you say.

What if Facebook had done that with their initial promise to "keep your personal information private"?

BAD:

Speaking of terms of service, check out this doozy I ran into the other day:

Due to manufacturer policies, all packaged items with plastic clamshells, shrink wrap, special seals, or other types of packaging that sustains damage when opened are NON-RETURNABLE if the packaging has been OPENED or TAMPERED.

…Yes, that's right, this company (an online electronics seller called SuperBiiz) has a 30-day return policy, but it doesn't apply to anything that comes in packaging that you have to open.  Er, which as far as I can tell, includes everything they sell.

Sheesh.

Of course, it doesn't end there.  There are a veritable plethora of companies engaging in bad practices now — practices that limit, undermine or destroy your rights as a consumer (fair use, first sale, and the right not to be gouged or price-fixed against); or damage or deteriorate your rights as a citizen (i.e. your 4th-amendment right not to be searched without cause, or your freedom to criticize them in public forums).  There are also companies who openly do damage to our country or society, say by hiring workers overseas for sweatshop wages to avoid paying locals, or by allowing oil-spills and mining-accidents when it's cheaper than adhering to the regulations (and it is, believe me). 

I don't have to say that there's no excuse for what these companies are doing.  Capitalism and the free market is not an excuse; the marketplace has rules, like everything else, and breaking or bending them is cheating, and removes your right to earn a profit or to continue to do business.

The problem is that regulatory agencies aren't the best, or strongest, ways to enforce good behavior from companies:  Consumers are.

And I DO have to say, I think, that there's no excuse for consumers who shirk their responsibility to be knowledgeable and shop carefully — no more than there's an excuse for citizens who ignore what their government does, don't vote, or carelessly pollute their environment.  In both cases, citizens and consumers, we have rights, and the responsibility to be aware of and protect them.

Don't worry, it's not that hard. 

I haven't set foot in a Wal-Mart in fifteen years and look!  I'm still alive! 

(Yes, that was snarky.  But seriously, sometimes I feel like I have to say that to my fellow Michiganders, who seem to think that something like "not shopping at Wal-Mart" is just a huge hardship; like it's way too much to ask them to not save $0.03 on toilet-paper this week so that manufacturing can stay in the U.S. a little and people can stop being underpaid and discriminated against.  CRY ME A RIVER, yo.  You have a bumper-sticker that says 'out of a job yet? keep buying foreign!' but you claim it only applies to cars?  PUH-LEEZE. ;)

Maybe Homeowners Wouldn't Strategically Default If Lenders Cooperated

Will a Human at B of A Please Modify My $160,000-Underwater Mortgage

Blatantly Racist Subprime Loans

Slothful Loan Modifiers Earn More Money When You're Delinquent

Bank Told Homeowner to Skip Payments, Then Foreclosed

Asymmetrical Norms: Why Homeowners Aren't Walking Away

Rich Investors "Walk Away" from $5 Billion Mortgage

…I just wanted to put up those articles (from The Consumerist, all relatively recent), and weigh in with my Hi-I-Was-A-Foreclosure-Prevention-Counselor-In-Recession-Central opinion…mostly because I would feel really bad if I left the field (which I have) without ever saying it really, really loudly:

THE MAJORITY OF FORECLOSURES COULD HAVE BEEN EASILY PREVENTED BY THE BANKS MAKING EVEN A TINY AMOUNT OF EFFORT TO STOP THEM.

THAT EFFORT IS NOT THERE.  FROM ANY OF THE BIG, BAILED-OUT BANKS.  STORIES LIKE THE ONES ABOVE ARE THE NORM, AND LAZY OR SHADY HOMEOWNERS WALKING AWAY IS ALMOST 100% A BANK-CREATED FICTION.  (Please don't be surprised that huge mega-banks can influence the media in this country.  I will have to punch you.)

DO YOUR PART and STOP HELPING TO SPREAD THE LIES.  THE BANKS CAUSED THIS PROBLEM BY ALLOWING THEIR OWN PROFESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES TO SELL UNSUSTAINABLE LOANS, AND THEY ARE PERPETUATING IT BY FAILING TO TAKE EVEN THE MOST BASIC STEPS TO TRY AND HELP HONEST FAMILIES WHO WANT TO PAY (often who want to pay on exorbitant terms that they really should walk away from) MAKE REASONABLE MODIFICATIONS TO THEIR LOANS.

I saw it; hundreds of times.  I met maybe five–maybe?–actually stupid homeowners, and one shady jerk, in three years of counseling; but I lost track of the number of times I personally witnessed:

• banks telling people they needed to miss payments before they could receive help; then foreclosing once the payments were missed;
• banks setting deadlines and then forcing people to miss them, and then foreclosing;
• banks "losing" paperwork over and over again, and refusing to extend deadlines because of it;
• banks offering "help" in the form of a modification that raised the homeowner's payments, often also making their loan terms worse (and how many sad, sad times homeowners accepted that modification, assuming that since they'd asked for help, they'd get it, and not wanting to be "rude" by reading the fine print and demanding a better deal) — and then foreclosing if the modification isn't accepted, or if it is and the new, higher payments can't be made.

I'm counting on you, Internet.  Don't let this whole foreclosure mess go down in history as a problem with consumers:   That was NEVER true.

Thank you.

(Bonus Happy Link:  Americans for Fairness in Lending)

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.  To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be." 

It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor.  Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold.  No such tales are told by the American poor.  They mock themselves and glorify their betters.  The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question:  "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"  There will also be an American flag no larger than a child's hand–glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue.  Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money.  They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.  This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.

–monograph by Howard W. Campbell, Jr., discussing the behavior of American prisoners in German camps in WWII.*

*as quoted in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five or, The Childrens' Crusade which if you haven't read, you really really oughtta.  It's amazing.  ;)

7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

I like the "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" blog, for several reasons:

• It defines "rich" as the balance between financial independence and lifestyle freedom that works for you
• It's competently and clearly written, and well-organized
• It focuses on non-sensationalist tips that really work, changing things you can actually control, making decisions that will improve your whole life (not just your pocketbook), and being conscious of your problems and "Knowing Thyself" as essential steps towards forging financial solutions.

And if you were only ever going to read one post on finance, or on that blog, I would probably recommend the "7 Lies We Tell Ourselves" one.  Not only does it list seven fantastic "Know Thyself" jumping-off points, but by reading them in in this format, you should learn what it is that you need to focus on about finances, whether it's planning or investing or working on behavioral fixes. That method — to pin down what your individual weakness is, and address it realistically — is the fastest way *I* can think of to effect good change.

I have one complaint about the article, however:  In Tip #1, they discuss negotiating for a salary. 

Negotiating a salary is a good idea, and it's a good idea to learn how exactly to do it, because it can make you a lot of money without changing anything else about what you're doing, and how to do it is not really obvious to most people.  So not only am I glad Ramit mentions it in this article; I think his including a video with detailed instructions for negotiating a salary is a great lagniappe.

However, as a former financial counselor and a frugal person, I've seen videos and other instructions of this type quite often, and this one makes one of the common mistakes that makes me go yyyrrrrrggggggghhhhAAAAAAAAAYOUIDIOTS! and foam rabidly all over my keyboard.  (It's not pretty.)

The mistake?

The woman in the video (and it is almost always a woman who says this, even when the material isn't explicitly aimed at women) just has to point out that women make less money than men, and that women are not very good negotiators ("by nature" is assumed even if not said) and often aren't shown how to do it…so obviously, you know, that leads to the completely logical conclusion that if women were better negotiators, we wouldn't have such a problem with wage disparity.

::FACEPALM::

Of course, it's no accident that the woman in this video is younger than me, recently graduated from Stanford and got 60K/yr at her last, poorly-negotiated job.  So if I, or someone else, were to say to her, "YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.  LET'S TELL ALL THE WOMEN WHO WORK AT WAL-MART TO NEGOTIATE BETTER SALARIES, AND MAYBE WAL-MART WILL AGREE TO PAY THEM THE SAME AS MEN," I'm sure she would be genuinely shocked to ponder that, for the vast majority of women, being fresh out of Stanford and needing to pull better than 60K out of your next round of "recruiter" interviews is not, in fact, the main problem.

(Note:  It may be that Ramit's audience for his blog is simply this group, of very-upper-middle-class rather-clueless young-ish people…but he doesn't explicitly narrow his advice to them, or say anything to that effect that I'm aware of.  And for the most part, I think his advice is very good no matter where you are on the economic treadmill.)

I'm not saying that salary-negotiating advice would not be useful to lower-income women, not at all.  But be serious — if most women in this country tried "negotiating" a salary at the kind of jobs they work (which are more often low-wage or crappy to begin with), they simply wouldn't get hired.  It's actually been shown quite clearly that just demanding wage parity can get you fired.

Now, if MOST of the women in this country suddenly demanded parity, that would probably change something — I imagine we're too much of the workforce now, for society to tolerate a general strike.  But we have families to feed, too; and one stereotype that is correct is that most women would rather suffer some indignity or lack than put their childrens' food supply in danger.  So Wal-Mart can probably rest easy on that one.

The next woman in a hundred-dollar suit to tell me that "if we were better negotiators…" though, is getting foamed on.  Ugh!

Here’s a fun idea to take some of the dread out of December:  Better Gifting. 

In this monster of a post are some discussions of what makes a "better gift", how to package intangible gifts to make them more impressive, and lots of ideas for meaningful gifts to give, for both big & small occasions.  My gift to you. 

What makes the best gifts?

 None of what I’m about to say is meant to diss the tradition of buying an item for your loved ones as a present.  But sometimes an item just isn’t the right thing.  Items can be expensive, impersonal and often just create clutter for your giftee.  Plus they can just be a pain in the butt, and for many people they take a lot of the fun right out of the holidays.  (As a former Catholic, I believe that only religions are allowed to take the fun out of holidays.)

A solution to those problems, if you’re having them, is to focus more closely on the people involved in gifting — you and the person you’re giving a gift to — rather than the item and the store.  This is a little countercultural, but trust me, it works great, and the theory ("think of the people, not the item") is convincing enough prima facie that most people won’t want to be seen arguing against it.   Which, I think we all agree, is a paramount consideration when it comes to family gatherings.

Better Gifts are:

• meaningful and personal
• send the message that your relationship to this person is valuable to you, and that you’d like it to persist and/or deepen (hint: if this is not true, then congratulations!  you don’t have to buy a gift at all!)
• not necessarily huge or complicated, or involve travel or events — they can be big or small, the main present or the stocking-stuffer, complex and special or quick and easy, depending on your needs.
• and as a huge added bonus, they’re often cheaper, or even free!

…Of course, if you’re like me, you often have to buy "small gifts", too, for people that maybe you don’t have a deep personal relationship with, but ought to (and/or want to) show your appreciation to with a gift.  Better Gifting can work there, too!  I’ll give more tips for "Better small gifts" at the end.

Better Gifts don’t all take a ton of planning or time; just some "Knowing Thyself" and thinking about the person you want to give a gift to.  In fact, it’s often surprisingly easy to think of something someone would like as a Better Gift, and that you’d like to give them.  Just think of the person’s hobbies, loves, life-situation, and how they relate to you (and how you’d like to relate to them), and something will almost certainly "present" itself.  ::ducks pun-tomatoes::

But sometimes, even if they have a great idea, people still don’t like to give intangible gifts because they don’t "feel right" — because in our culture, we’re conditioned towards boxes and paper, basically.  One way to make giving Better Gifts easier is to focus a little on the presentation.  Here’s how to make intangible gifts acceptable and painless to give:

• Write it down:  If your gift comes with tickets, a brochure for a place or event, or can be formalized in some object (i.e. a golf ball for a golf-outing), then that’s easy; you can give it like a regular gift.  If it’s totally intangible, though, just write a nice description of it and give that as the gift.  This doesn’t have to look or feel cheap — in fact, it can be a whole other part of the gift, if you make it special.  If you’re a writer, use poetry or a short story to make your point; if you’re a musician, sing it; if you’re an artist or photographer, add some visual flourish. The more important the person and the occasion is to you, the better it will feel (for you and them) to put some thought into the presentation.  And even if it’s nothing big, a hand-folded paper box or package covered in photocopied family pictures can make any gift seem extra-special.
• Wrap it up:  People like boxes with stuff in them (and boxes are reusable!).  If your gift is "big" (in the sense of quality), and your giftee likes surprises, consider wrapping it up really special, for instance, as though it’s a huge or complicated physical gift.  Some of my best have been things like "huge box with a tiny box at the bottom that has a note describing the gift"-type things.  The idea behind gift boxes is that your giftee can linger over the gift a while, wondering what it is, etc.  You can still use this (and other tricks, like hiding gifts or giving "hints") for intangible gifts!  Further, if you’ve spent no actual money on your present, you can drop a few dollars to get a really nice, professional wrapping job and still come out ahead!
• Don’t apologize:  You’re not a kid who didn’t have time to shop; you put thought and effort into this gift, so act like it.  Sometimes people who receive intangible gifts are confused by the mixed messages sent by the gifter, who may say things like, "Well, money’s been tight this year…" –Money’s always tight; that’s not why you did this.  You took the time to come up with this personalized gift because a fruit basket or body lotion wasn’t good enough to show this person that you care about them.  You don’t have to say those things, but make sure you know them, so you can act the way that shows the giftee how you feel! 

And here’s my huge, evolving-as-I-think-of-things list of ideas for Better Gifts!  (By all means, if you have more ideas, add to my list in the comments!)  I’ve given almost all of these — having been both broke and creative for most of my life — except the ones that require cooking or some other skill I can’t do.  But they’ve all been very well-received, even by the parts of my family that are pretty materialistic. 

• Has the person complained about something that’s broken or ugly in their home or car?  Offer to repair, re-paint, or replace it if you can.  A freshly-painted fence, un-squeaked door, or re-potted plant can make a very appreciated gift.  If the thing to be fixed is in a space you’re comfortable and welcome in, you can even "sneak gift" it — just leave a small, indicative-of-the-occasion gift-tag taped somewhere near the thing you’ve done, and voila.
• For anyone who’s a parent with younger children, an offer to babysit for free for an evening (or even, if you’re awesome and normally one of their sitters, a weekend) is nearly always a welcome gift.  Make sure you’re clear about when you can do it, so that they don’t call hoping to cash in their gift on a bad night!
  • For a really special gift for parents with young kids, pair the offer to babysit with a gift certificate for movie tickets or dinner, or with something nice for them to wear out.
  • Turn a babysitting offer into a gift for the kids too, by specifying something fun you’ll do with them when you babysit, like going swimming, taking pictures of flowers or wildlife (something kids always enjoy, in my experience) or making art together.  Wrap it up separately from Mom & Dad’s gift, so they have a package to open!
• If you do something for a living that your giftee might find useful, give it to them!  Often people don’t like asking for free work, but it’s a huge bonus for most people to get their carpets cleaned / website updated / furniture moved / hair cut / car repaired, etc., without having to pay for it.  Make sure you specify when you can do the work.
• Give a flyer or brochure for a show or event coming to town, and a note saying you’d like to pay the way for your giftee and you to go together.  (Make sure it’s something they’ll like too, though in reality the chance to spend time with you is probably a good gift for just about anyone who likes you…NOTE, however, that you may know people who are introverts, and if that’s the case, remember that big crowds and long outings may not be their thing.  They may rather just have dinner at your place, or spend a quiet evening camping, etc.  Or they might really rely on you to drag them out to cool places.  People are crazy complicated, aren’t they?)
• Pictures of yourself or your family (especially kids) make great gifts for some people, but here’s a twist I like:  If you know someone who likes to take pictures, give them a Photo Outing: arrange a trip to somewhere scenic (park, historic location, etc.), and promise to dress to the nines and pose for pictures.  If you have children and a parent or other family-member who likes to have pictures, offering to dress your kids up and come along for nice pictures is an especially nice gift!
• If you cook — even if you can just cook one thing that your giftee likes — make it for them as a present, or give them a "dinner date" with you where they can come over and you’ll cook for them and visit.
  • Also, "tea party" invites are great for some people, and let you give a simple mug, or just a tea-bag, as the material part of the gift.
    • While that works great for some adults too, it bears special mention that there is no little girl on the planet who won’t squee over a tea-party invite for them and a few of their friends (or dolls), complete with grown-up tea and cookies.  I promise.
• If there’s a charity someone is fond of, donate in their name, or buy them a membership if they don’t have one (most charities have memberships starting at reasonable prices, and you can get a membership card to give to them as a present).  Alternately, buy yourself a membership and give them a photocopy of your membership card as a gift — it’s a nice way to show that you care about helping them support their cause.
• If you’re good with plants, grow some nice ones in any old pots at all, and give them as gifts.  Even better, grow herbal or medicinal plants that you know your giftee would like to have, such as lavender, rosemary, aloe, etc. 
• If you live a distance away from your giftee and you don’t see each other enough, consider giving a "free room and board"-type gift, which is basically a formal invitation for them to come and stay with you for free.  Even if you think it "goes without saying" that they could do so, an explicit invite is always a nice gesture.  Pair it with an idea for something fun you can do together while they’re in town, and this gift is always a winner.
• If you know your giftee has a regular chore to do that they maybe don’t like so much — mucking out the chicken-coop, or taking Grandma to church every Sunday, or what have you — give them an offer to do it for them!  You can offer to do it once so they can have a "day off", or to take over for a while to give them a real break.  Either way, they’ll probably really appreciate it!
• Offer to help get things ready for winter — if you know how to winterize a car, hang storm windows, or compost a garden for next year, that’s work people are almost always thrilled to have someone else do! 

And before you go thinking that giving free work is a chintzy idea, let me assure you that it’s not:  free work = free time that someone wouldn’t have normally had, to do whatever they want with, and that’s a gift almost EVERYONE really likes!

On to some ideas for smaller, quicker gifts.

Better Small Gifts make great stocking-stuffers, just-because presents or additions to a big gift — but like the bigger Better Gifts, they’re still meaningful, and usually quite inexpensive.  Here are some ideas:

• If you like to craft at all, make something small in quantity, to fill up stockings and to act as "back-up gifts" for unexpected people.  (This year I’m making chainmail keychains!)
• If you write or draw, take pictures or scrapbook, or anything similar, make a sincere card with original art inside.  These work much nicer than bought cards, and for small occasions, long-distance holidays, apologies or "just because", they make an awesome gift.  Don’t forget to add your thoughts on why the person is special to you — trust me, people love to hear that stuff.  ;)
• Cook something fun or healthy (depending on your giftee) and give it, or a sample of it, with the recipe attached — talk about a gift that keeps on giving.  That turns a dozen cupcakes and some index cards into 12 potential gifts!
• Procure some art supplies for someone you know who likes to do arts or crafts:  These can be very inexpensive (paper!  wire!  discarded fabric scraps!  broken plates for mosaics!), and are almost always appreciated and used.
• Give the gift of storage:  Any good, sturdy box or container you have, painted or covered in cloth or paper to make it look nice, will be appreciated by giftees who have stuff laying around.
• Spruce up a simple, useful item, like washcloths, boxes of Kleenex, socks, or shoelaces, with your own personal touches –  besides being touching and useful, they won’t take up unnecessary space (since everyone has space for things like socks set aside already). 
• Awesome-ify something.  Even if it’s a common, used, or otherwise un-special and un-gift-worthy item, your skills can make it amazing and appreciated.  If you like to gothify, steampunkify, cute-ify, or personalize things, get some together (or set some aside over the year) as gifts.  As my diplomatic yet plucky Grandma used to say, "at least it’s a conversation piece"!)

For more ideas on creative, special, homespun, frugal, and other badass forms of giftery, I highly suggest the finance blog The Simple Dollar.  They frequently have really solid advice for avoiding overspending and frugal but meaningful holiday stuff.

Of course, if YOU have a great idea for this kind of thing, don’t be stingy!  Give it to me in the comments and I’ll consider myself set for Xmas.  ;)

Maybe you, like me, went most of your life without realizing that “Labor Day” is, in fact, a holiday celebrating the sacrifices of brave Union Leaders and Members, and their incomparable bravery throughout history (recent and otherwise), in the face of a pattern of war-crime-scale oppression and cruelty by large corporations.

Maybe you’ve never heard of the Pullman Train Strike, or the violence that ensued when the government sent our own military in to fight…guess for which side?  It was that event that finally brought the situation to public attention enough so that a Holiday was eventually declared.

Maybe, in fact, you’ve never done any reading on the history of the worker’s movements in the United States, where most of us are happy to assume that worker’s rights are a given, even though Union membership is at a low (9%) not seen since the 30′s, the vastly unfair “at will” employment is still common, and bigger and bigger corporations set the rules with less and less public oversight.

Maybe you aren’t aware of corporate America’s track record when it comes to taking care of its employees.  But you should be, because whether you’re cognizant of it or not, workers in this country are and have always been engaged in a struggle, a fight for fair pay and safe work that the other side has shown time and again it’s not willing to provide unless it’s forced to.  Unless you’re from a whole family of CEOs, this day was set aside–against much resistance–specifically to help you remember, to know your enemy.

Maybe this day off is a good time to look it up?  This article on the Daily Kos gives a great summary, or you can start here on Wikipedia and have a ball.  (The book “A Brief History of the American Empire”, which sometimes shows up on my sidebar, is another good resource.)

Besides that, show the suits they haven’t gotten you down yet, by having an awesome day!

Dear Valued Customer.  If you like amusing slander of credit-card companies, you might enjoy reading that.  Also if you have a thing for strikethroughs, I suppose.

It’s day three and for some reason I’m posting neat original content on LJ and chatty updates-on-life to pd.com.  Eh, I’ll just roll with it; it seemed like this food thing I’m doing might merit more details.

I’m really amazed and amused by how very like an Uberman adaptation this experience is.  There’s that shift in everything, how time passes and things stand out and you realize all kinds of things you’ve been thinking habitually forever that suddenly don’t make sense anymore.

I’ve been surprised by all the changes, but I shouldn’t have been — I drastically changed my whole diet.  It’s somewhat telling that it didn’t occur to me before that this would have a big impact, isn’t it?

So, I get fuller much easier now, which isn’t surprising as I haven’t had a meal over 200 calories in three whole days now.  Those meals fill me up nicely, and when I get hungry between them I have some kind of raw vegetable (though I’ve been thinking, adding cooked ones would increase the variety; I dunno), and that fills me up too.

The food I eat, I taste. It’s really odd how strongly everything tastes.  But it’s nice; nothing tastes bad or anything.

Oddly, my problem isn’t overeating — that’s what I want to do of course, but so far I haven’t — what I have done is eat too little.  During the day, I don’t want to eat one of my “meals” in a rush, or just grab something; I have to think about it.  So I put it off, and end up eating nothing for half a day like I did today.

I’m not sure if that’s a big deal or not.  This diet isn’t really predicated upon eating at certain times, is it?  I chose not to make up the calories that I missed out on earlier (because from what my sources say, it’s actually good when starting a calorie-restriction gig to cut waaay back the first few days, as it kick-starts the necessary processes).  Although, when I had to ask myself if I should have that artichoke in addition to the already-170-calories I’d had for dinner, even though it would probably push it over a bit, the fact that I was already down 400 for the day made it easier to say “hell yes, artichoke!”.  Which is as it should be, right?

So anyway, yes, this is proving interesting.

Crap.  I just realized that I should probably buy a scale, eh?  Well…maybe.  But I’m NOT putting one of those goofy slider-bar .gifs on my blogs.  That’s a little masturbatory even for me.

Okay, peace ya’ll, time for some real writing before bed.  I’ve got another story almost done and another one starting.  Woot!

P.S.  Also, something special coming up soon…Content from Beyond!